about that cat

Flamingo asked me the other day how Heisenberg was doing. Heisenberg, for those of you who don't know, is my answer to a housepet in an apartment (or tenement) lacking the allowances required for a cat. I named him after Heisenberg because, after all, every imaginary housecat needs a name, and a name that is more commonly associated to the words "Uncertainty Principle" seems, by very definition, suitable for a feline not-life form.

Anyway, Flamingo asked me how Heisenberg was doing, to which I answered something disgruntled along the lines of how the cat had added insult to injury by laughing at my sister's new circus groupie status, only to fall madly in love with a stuffed cat prize at a state fair. "I told him she wasn't any good -- all silent and unresponsive and definitely lacking in intelligence -- and that just seemed to encourage him." Which, after I'd said it, turned out to be the absolute truth. Here I hadn't thought of Heisenberg for months, and suddenly it turned out that all this time, he'd been living an entire shadow life behind my back.

This is the thing with imaginary cats. You may not have to clean their litter boxes or feed them or pet them or pay attention to them, but eventually they'll find a way to lead elusive, fascinating lives that are more interesting than yours.

So to recap: my sister is working with the circus as a big top cleaner, my imaginary cat is doing the nookie with some cotton-stuffed, hook-hanging tramp in a prize booth somewhere, and me? I had salad for lunch yesterday.

I'm not in any way regretting the relative staidness of my life in comparison to Sako's or my imaginary cat's or, I daresay, my mother's. Mom is apparently headed to Hawaii next month for work, or so I learned from a colleague of hers in San Francisco last weekend. "Your mom's quite a social girl, isn't she?" she marveled. "She has wine parties in her room every night."

("Something you want to tell me?" I asked Mom over the phone rather pointedly, later, to which she countered, "Do you know where your sister is?" After that, we established a cautious cease-fire and mutually agreed there are some things we're both better off not knowing.)

As I say, I don't regret my life -- there's enough excitement in it already in knowing I could be the very first Hirata spawn to have her own mortgage, not to mention that trivial wedding thing quickly sneaking up on me -- but there are odd occasions when I hear the adventures of others and feel, well, you know.

Tired.

Sako is back from Las Vegas/Red Rock where, it turns out, she was not with the circus at all, but on some random rock climbing expedition. Where she "sort of broke something."

"What?"

"It's funny. I always thought breaks would hurt more, but everyone tells me that breaks hurt less than sprains. So anyway, I'm okay." Sako, or rather, Rocks-Mountains-Ice-and-Big-Top-Climbing without Medical Insurance or a Job That Doesn't Involve Literal Clowns Sako, appeared to find this amusing. "Oh," she added. "Don't tell Mom."

This is one of my mother's nightmares, Sako getting sick or having to go to the emergency room. Now it's my new nightmare. "Do you need money?" I asked.

"Nah. I'm going to a free clinic. They'll take care of it. Anyway, I'm back at the circus tomorrow. I'll be there until I leave for Spain. I'm looking forward to Spain. Just wanted you to know everything was okay, and I'm back in town and stuff."

"Except for the broken arm."

"Wrist or something," she said vaguely. "It doesn't hurt."

I present to you my sister. She's starting to make me sympathize with Republicans.

(Heisenberg just ambled into my cubicle -- being imaginary, he occasionally follows me to work -- and asked with a suspicious nonchalance if I could look up feline STDs on the internet. If our IT staff monitors our internet usage, I'll be interested to know what they'll make of that.)

a little pride

So for the week or so, I've been absolutely pregnant with pride -- great, fat, glorious, satiated pride -- for the city of San Francisco, its mayor, its city officials, its volunteers, and the stand they've made against bigotry and homophobia.

This is not the purpose of this entry, mind. I simply thought I should make a note of it. I'm proud of San Francisco. I'm proud to have lived there. Most of all, I'm proud that there are people in this world who will put their money where their mouth is, and show the world that prejudice, fear, and hatred, no matter what god it claims to worship, is wrong.

In other news, my sister has run away with the circus.

Email from Sako...

the things people do for their friends...or is it, the things people do for themselves?
yup. that must be it.

i commited myself to visiting my friend in spain next month by purchasing a plane ticket before obtaining sufficient traveling funds. i have done this before and it always worked out well, especially with a little financial aid from plastic money. as i no longer own any of these high interest credit cards, i am stuck working for a change.

CAVALIA, a circus created by the same people who started cirque du soleil, is touring around the states for the next 10 months. i highly advise catching it if it's in town. i started working for CAVALIA, cleaning the exterior of the big top (the tent). for some reason, many of my friends have decided that this is a pretty neat job and have basically volunteered, calling in sick at work, and getting paid a pittance compared to their 'real jobs' just so they can hang off of a rope to scrub down a 100 foot tent. wierd. circus people are everything, and more, that i expected them to be. fun and quirky, energetic and dedicated, these two-pack-a-day smoking quebec-ans are such a great group of people, i could easily see myself running away with this production. i think i will.

if anyone ever gets the chance to participate in a circus, especially a canadian one, jump at the offer...or at least tell me about it so i can sign up!

i leave for red rocks/ vegas today.
i leave for barcelona on the first.

love,
sako

circus

[yhirata] Have to write about my sister joining the circus. Because that's just /weird/.

[Flamingo] Oh, /this/ is where you start calling what she does weird? You have to reach "circus" before you call out the word "weird" to us?

Sad, isn't it? So, yeah. My sister joined the circus.

This wasn't what the entry was going to be about, mind you. I have other things, other stories, other issues, but while I was out buying lunch yesterday, I got a bunch of instant messages from my sister.

She joined the circus.

My sister is a carny.

"Well, not really," she wrote after that misdirected bombshell, misdirected because I wasn't at my desk to reel and clutch at my throat with gobbling sounds of horror. "There's a show in town. It's here for five days. They needed people to rappel off the big top. I'll be cleaning. Love you, bye!" --and then she was gone, popping offline just in time for my, "You joined the what?!" to disappear into the black hole of internet space.

The Guy, who as yet has no familial relationship to her and therefore finds her antics entertaining, amusing, and in a curious way, gratifying, instantly started to sparkle with delight. "Your sister's a what?" And then, inevitably: "'Small hands. Smell like cabbage.'"

My coworkers were entertained by this development in the ongoing saga of madness that is my family. "You don't have normal problems with your family, do you?" one asked. "Other people, they have drug addicts, abortions, alcoholics, abuse--"

"They do?"

"--and you have a mother who wants to feed you cactus, and a sister in the circus."

I think I'll choose to be grateful about that.

My family is, I think, starting to reach mythic proportions to my coworkers, in much the same way they've inspired expressions of disbelief from readers of my journal. One of the purple monkeys made dark comments about fictional boyfriends and fictional sisters as she marched out of my cube this morning. A picture of my sister failed to appease her, consisting as it did of a completely black profile of my sister dangling by a rope off a precipice, flanked on one side by massive stalactites of ice.

"You could have photoshopped anybody there," she pointed out, which is true enough. And anyway, many people have a hard time believing in my sister until they actually meet her, at which point they decide they no longer believe my stories. It seems unfair that an absent sister allows people to believe -- however tenuously -- in my stories, if not in her existence, whereas a corporeal one validates her existence while simultaneously making the tales seem wildly fantastic.

She just seems so, I don't know. Ordinary. And yet, I defy anyone to ask her about the stuff she's done and think I'm making anything up.

She's so pleasant. So normal.

Just like my mother. "I'm not sure I believe in her, either," quoth the purple monkey.

Birds of a feather, those two.

the ox and the dog.

There is this about the Ox: she is a born leader. She is dependable. She is possessed of an innate ability to accomplish great things. She is a tireless worker who believes in doing things right the first time. She is stubborn and dogmatic, a my-way-or-the-highway kind of person who has no concept of when to back down. She can't be bothered with what other people think and prefers to do what makes her feel best.

The Ox: "Does this make me look fat?"

Friend: "Did you just ask me--?"

The Ox: "No."

Friend: "Okay, because I thought you just asked me--"

The Ox: "I just ask because it doesn't make Barbie look fat."

Friend: "You're not Barbie."

The Ox: "You think if I dyed my hair?"

Friend: "Barbie's white, chickie."

The Ox: "Colored contacts?"

Friend: "--Aren't going to make you white."

The Ox: "I don't want to be white."

Friend: "That's good."

The Ox: "I just want to be Barbie."

Friend: "What, plastic? Anorexic? White?"

The Ox: "Is that bad?"

Friend: "I hear being black is cooler, these days."

The Ox: "Oh. Then I want to be black. Yo."

Friend: "I don't think you'd look good, black."

The Ox: "I wouldn't?"

Friend: "I think you look just fine being Asian."

The Ox: "I'm not Asian."

Friend: "Okay, whatever you are."

The Ox: "I'm white."

Friend: "Shouldn't you be heading back to work?"

The Ox: "Work?"

There is this about the Dog: he is loyal, faithful and honest. He has a firm code of ethics. He has trouble trusting others. He is trustworthy himself -- except for the occasional "little white lies" he tells in order to make things go more smoothly. He makes a wonderful, discreet and loyal friend (despite any white lies) and is an excellent listener.

The Ox: "Want to hear a couple of really stupid stories?"

The Dog: "Is this going to be a story about work?"

The Ox: "No."

The Dog: "Okay, because if it's about work, you should expect that I won't be very interested."

The Ox: "What?"

The Dog: "I'll pretend that I'm listening but I won't be. I'll just nod my head a couple of times and make noises like I'm agreeing with you."

The Ox: "They're not stories about work."

The Dog: "Mm hm. That's nice. Okay."

The Ox always found the whole concept of zodiacs rather silly, though in that narcissistic way that one-way reflective glass is silly; knowing that someone might be looking at one and just as easily might not, one still presents one's best side, and glances sideways at one's reflection to make sure one looks hot for the complete (if any) stranger standing on the other side. Not that the Ox ever does that, of course. This is simply a, um, example.

There is a stealthy, ego-stroking pleasure in the illusion of grandeur, in the notion that there are entire galaxies adjusting themselves overhead to help determine the course of one's personality, not to mention one's entire existence.

The Chinese zodiac only rambles into the Ox's peripheral vision once or twice a year. Usually when the Dog brings it up. The Dog, being -- forgive this humble scribe -- dogmatic about his beliefs (when he chooses) occasionally resurrects this amazingly unreliable means of predicting the future to launch monkey wrenches into the course of his relationship with the Ox.

For instance.

Said the Dog: "We can't have a baby next year. It'll be a rooster. I can't have a kid who's a rooster. We'll never get along."

Said the Ox, wisely: "It wouldn't matter what sign your children are born under. They'll be your children. You won't get along anyway."

The Dog: "You'll have to wait until ... hm. I get along with Monkeys. You could have a baby this year."

The Ox: "We're getting married in June."

The Dog: "If you get pregnant now--"

The Ox: "Listen good, little man. There will never be a child born in our household born under any sign that involves monkeys or the color purple. Sink that thought firmly into your spongey little brain."

The Dog: "You're trying to sabotage my relationship with my children."

The Ox: "No Monkeys!"

Yesterday, after a long hiatus of sanity, the Dog paged the Ox with some excitement. "Look," he said. "This is our relationship. Oh no. There's trouble in the fourth quarter for you. Oh, and for me, too. Oh no."

The Dog was sounding anxious. His tail was tucking nervously between his legs. Skeptical, the Ox went to investigate, and was momentarily lulled into a feeling of narcissistic awe. "That is exactly our relationship," she paged back. "That's so cool."

Which was, it transpired, the exact thing to say to make the Dog lose all faith in the stars. "Orderly?" he sniggered. "You're orderly?"

"I have an orderly spirit," the Ox said with great dignity, because the Ox does not approve of being mocked.

"Is that what it is?" said the Dog. Despite the fact that the entire conversation was done through Yahoo Instant Messenger, the Ox could hear distinctly the peals of mirth occuring in the background.

And really, biologically speaking, who ever heard of an Ox and a Dog getting together anyway? You want to talk about unnatural--

In other news: a tribute to my people. Or something. The Guy claims the third bobble from the right reminds him of me. I fail to see the resemblance.

read between the lines

The Guy and I have been together for almost three years. In that time, we've never had a single fight.

No, really. Not one.

This isn't something that I confess to a lot of people. Listeners are far too prone to saying things like, "What's wrong with you?" (or, conversely, "What's wrong with him?" which is the same thing, just more politically correct.) Then they're likely to launch into stories about the passionate relationships that they were in, in which the sex was great but there was nonstop fighting, which was why the sex was great, and how relieved they were to get out of those relationships and how grateful they are they're no longer fighting all the time and how they wished they had a relationship like mine, and . . .

. . . and all the time they're thinking, "Is Yuhri a Tamagotchi? Who the fuck has a three year relationship and doesn't have a single fight? Chick's not human."

Or, if they're a little more creative, they're thinking, "Maybe this guy she's engaged to is a figment of her imagination, like that cat?"

I'm not particularly interested in other people's old passionate, sexual relationships, or their lurid Tamagotchi fantasies about little yellow me and my little yellow buttons. On the whole, therefore, I tend to keep my mouth shut about the general tranquility of my relationship with the Guy.

With whom sex is outstanding even without fights, thank you.

The other night, however, we finally had our very first squabble. (Squabble. What a ridiculous word. It sounds like a board game played with live ducks.) A tiff. A tempest. A teapot. The Guy spent half the night on the couch.

Thing was, I didn't realize we were having a fight. I was joking when I told him he was kicked out of bed. Damn my Japanese genes. Nobody ever believes I have a sense of humor.

The roots of it all began in New Jersey, where I engaged in a two hour conversation with nurses about teeth. White teeth, to be specific. My teeth are, like the rest of me, solid, even, and yellow. The coloring has nothing to do with my eating habits; I might be the only Seattle native left who doesn't regularly consume a Guatemalan's weight in coffee. I also don't smoke. I suspect that the origins of my dental shading might have something to do with the two years in childhood when I decided to assert my maturity and independence from my mother by never brushing my teeth again.

Creative choice in self-empowerment for a 5 year old. In retrospect, I don't think I made a single intelligent decision until I was at least 25.

Fast-forward the clock to last weekend, wherein the Guy and I made a trip to Costco. We were standing in the check-out line when I noticed the bank of dental care products. This just goes to show the superiority of Costco over your average supermarket; not only can you buy toilet paper by the crate, your impulse shopping enticements consist of row upon row of hygiene products, instead of foil-wrapped fat bombs from your friends at Hershey Corp.

At any rate: dental care products. And among the dental care products: teeth whitening products. "Look," I said.

"Want it?"

"We could try it."

The Guy obligingly trotted forth and retrieved, and we went home with a Costco-sized pack of what turned out to be liquid tooth whitener from Crest.

If you have never used liquid tooth whitener from Crest, allow me to run you through the experience. The package comes with fourteen little brushes, tiny plastic things with tiny plastic bristles at the end of a long blue plastic handle. It comes with fourteen tiny little foil packets containing tiny amounts of white goop, like plastic, that almost instantly dries to booger consistency upon contact with air. It comes with a sheet of instructions.

So here's what you're supposed to do.

1. Brush your teeth.
   
2. Dry your teeth. (What?)
   
3. Get a little painty thingy. Get a little packet thingy.
   
4. Open little packet thingy, and squirt white goop onto brush.
   
5. Paint your teeth. Fast. Or it'll dry.
   
6. Too late.
   
7. Apply fresh white goop to "smile" teeth.
   
8. Do not drool.
   
9. Allow to dry.
   

Being the patient purple monkey that I am, I read the instruction sheet four times, followed every instruction to the letter, and eventually found myself with a set of bright yellow teeth that looked like they'd been visiting the Elmer's glue. The white goop, which smelled peculiarly like chloride, hardened into long gummy streaks that tasted pretty much the way they looked. I showed my new smile to the Guy, who looked dubious.

"No kisses for you, tonight."

No, that wasn't the fight. I wouldn't have kissed me either.

I puttered into the bedroom and began putzing about on the computer, occasionally pausing to clean something. I puttered out of the bedroom, and into the office, where the Guy was busily doing something geeky.

Now, here's where I have to do a little explaining. The goop on the teeth was fairly adhesive; that is to say, every idle movement of my mouth wasn't causing it to flake off like voters at a Democratic convention. Speaking should therefore not have been a problem. On the other hand, having this goop on my teeth felt weird; it made me reluctant to make certain sounds. Anything that required pressure against my teeth, for instance, or the passage of air between them.

You'd be surprised how many vowels and consonants require your lips to move.

"You!" I declared in a spray of saliva. The Guy flinched as it hit the back of his neck. "You! You hadda kode de dwessah dwawah."

The Guy flashed a shiny eye at me. "What did you say?"

"De dwessah dwawah. You hadda kode id. Wad'z zo hawd abou' koding da dwessah dwawah?"

"The dwessah dwawah?"

"Da dwessah dwawah."

"The dresser drawer?"

"Yed."

"What's so hard about closing the dresser drawer?"

"Yed."

The Guy was beginning to quiver. "Why should I close the dwessah dwawah?"

"Bekud id dan-jawuz," I said earnestly.

The Guy choked. "Why is it dan-jawuz?"

"I kud hid 'i head."

This required more explanation. It required a demonstration. The Guy crowbarred himself out of his chair and padded into the bedroom. I puttered after him, muttering agitatedly.

During my trip to New Jersey, the Guy had gone out and purchased an Ikea dresser for me, to sit side-by-side with his older, more stolid one. Until my return, I'd always kept my clothes in a small portable set of wire drawers, which just about managed to contain my entire wardrobe. Ever since I've known him, the Guy has had more clothes. More of everything, in fact: more clothes, more shoes, more hair.

Working with the purple monkeys has expanded my wardrobe a tiny bit. I outgrew the wire drawers. Now I had real ones. My drawers, when we walked into the bedroom, were all nice and orderly and shut. The Guy's drawers, on the other hand, displayed a remarkably cavalier attitude towards physics. Three of them gaped wide open, loaded with enough cumulative weight to launch the dresser's base of support into another zip code.

"Dewe," I said with triumph. "I tode you."

The Guy nudged an open drawer. It creaked. He inspected it. "How could you possibly hit your head on that, you hamster?"

"I kud bed dow. Wed I stad up, I kud hid 'i head. Id dan-jawuz."

"It's what?"

"Dan-jawuz."

He started to giggle. "I keep forgetting you're four feet tall and blind."

"Fug you."

...which sent him off the deep end entirely. He pounced on me like a bear, and squashed me in some sort of hug that involved a great deal of drool transfer from my chlorine-maligned mouth to his shirt. It's hard not to salivate when one's being fed dark cotton and chest. "You're so silly," he chortled.

"You aw seebig od da couje," I told his chest.

At two o'clock in the morning, I woke up to discover that the bed was empty. I wandered out to the living room to investigate, and found the Guy curled up like some sort of small, fuzzy animal on the loveseat in the living room. The monitor of the laptop on the coffee table bathed him in its warm, Microsoft benevolence.

He looked very cute. He looked very peaceful. I poked him mercilessly.

"Wake up. Wake up. What are you doing out here? Are you an idiot? You stupid monkey. Why are you sleeping on the couch?"

It's the curse of the Guy that he is a light sleeper; snores and thrashing and physical abuse tend to waken him almost immediately. Poking -- really determined poking aimed at the temple -- perked him up right away. He opened his eyes and looked bewildered, like a small pet rodent whose god has played another evil trick on him and replaced his pine shavings with shredded bits of the San Francisco Examiner: bad litter and bad content.

"You kicked me out of bed," he said pathetically. "You said I should sleep on the couch. Why did you wake me up? I was sleeping."

The poor, stupid little man. I regarded him tenderly and poked him some more. He whimpered. "I was joking." Poke. "You're a dumb monkey. Get up. Get up. It was a joke. Ha ha. Joke. Let's go to bed."

I herded my confused man to bed, tucked him in, crawled into bed myself, rolled over, and squashed him.

Our very first fight. Glorious.

And who's a Tamagotchi now?